German Politics -

How Centuries Old Local Differences Still Influence German Politics, by moonofalabama

The German federal election results did not surprise much. What they do show though are the long term effects of geographic-demographic-political idiosyncrasies.

Here are the general election results for each party and the potential coalitions they could form in parliament to create a government. Voter participation was a still healthy 77%.

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Some explanations:

• The Social-democrats (SPD) are the left of center mainstream party. They won new voters from the other side of the center as well as from the left (Linke). Their candidate for chancellor, the centrist Olaf Scholz, will likely lead the next government.
• The Christian Union (CDU + the Bavarian CSU) are the right of center mainstream party. They lost due to several recent corruption scandals as well as for presenting the gaffe prone Armin Laschet as chancellor candidate.
• The Greens are, well, camouflage green as they are pro-NATO Atlanticists. A few month ago they were artificially hyped as potential leading party but deflated over unexplained exaggerations in their main candidate's vita and a too unrealistic environmental program.
• The FDP are economic liberals who are at times trending towards libertarian.
• The AFD are right to very right wing 'alternative' conservatives. There losses are due to their anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine positions.
• The Left (Linke) is nominally socialist. Over the last two years their leadership has emphasized 'wokeness' instead of socialism which led to a loss of their long term supporters.

The previous government under Chancellor Merkel was a black-red coalition of the Union parties and the Social-democrats.

post truth - Glenn Greenwald and Iowa’s latest WTF Moments, by Paul Street

 

 little noxious nugget buried deep in Greenwald’s essay:

“all of this stopped being about The Science™ long ago — ever since months of relentless messaging that it is our moral duty to Stay At Home unless we want to sociopathically kill Grandma was replaced overnight by dictates that we had a moral duty to leave our homes to attend densely packed street protests since the racism being protested was a more severe threat to the public health than the global COVID pandemic.”

Please note four subtle and pernicious things here: 

the revolting ageist dissing of concern for the special vulnerabilities of old people (“Grandma”); 

the pandemo-fascist-bootlicking dissing of consensus epidemiological and public health science (derided as “The Science™”); 

the sick, Tuckems-style white boy suggestion that it was hypocritically pandemicist for George Floyd protesters to take to the streets en masse in 2020 (that suggestion is bullshit since the protests were outdoors and heavily masked and did not in fact function as covid-spreaders); 

and the revolting implied disregard shown for the critical importance of systemic and murderous white racism as an social and political issue, consistent with 

    his curious alignment with the white-nationalist neofascist Donald Trump and the January 6th marauders in their purported struggle with “the deep state.”

(This is consistent also with how Greenwald broke into the public eye many years ago – as the lawyer for Illinois Nazi leader Matt Hale.)

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/17/glenn-greenwald-and-iowas-latest-wtf-moments/ 

As the prolific left political scientist and media critic Anthony DiMaggio recently wrote me:

Some of Greenwald’s right-wing giveaways:

Attacking the Democrats as fascist and Orwellian while denying that white supremacy and fascism is a real thing on the American right. This is just monstrous and deplorable, but, hey, he made his bones defending Nazis, so that’s what he does.

He’s on my (left) side? Really? I don’t ally with white supremacists, the GOP, Nazis, and carry water for a fascist-denying, climate-denying, arch-plutocratic GOP. His opposition to NSA spying was almost 10 years ago. He can’t sit on his laurels forever. His appeal to the left has to be about more than that. If that’s it, plus all the normalizing of rightwing neofascist politics he’s been doing, it’s a sad state of affairs. And now he’s channeling GOP talking points with all the [anti-] mask stuff and [ripping on] AOC. He talks shit about her and not wearing masks at a gala, but says nothing about pandemofascists like Greg Abbot, Ron DeSantis, and Trump. You can’t do that and be taken seriously on the left, or what passes for it.

Where is GG’s attack on the GOP for the anti-CRT Orwellian spying on teachers in the classroom stuff? He has literally ZERO, ZERO to say that is critical of the GOP. All he does is attack Dems. Because that’s what Fox wants. That makes him a Republican. “Glenn Greenwald is a Republican Because FOX News Signs for His Checks.” That’s your headline right there.

 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/24/glenn-greenwald-is-not-your-misunderstood-left-comrade/

 Supply Chain: “Americans Have No Idea What the Supply Chain Really Is” [The Atlantic]. “Everyday life in the United States is acutely dependent on the perpetual motion of the supply chain, in which food and medicine and furniture and clothing all compete for many of the same logistical resources. As everyone has been forced to learn in the past year and a half, when the works get gummed up—when a finite supply of packaging can’t keep up with demand, when there aren’t enough longshoremen or truck drivers or postal workers, when a container ship gets wedged sideways in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes—the effects ripple outward for weeks or months, emptying shelves and raising prices in ways that can seem random. All of a sudden, you can’t buy kettlebells or canned seltzer. All of this was supposed to be better by now…. Overseas shipping is currently slow and expensive for lots of very complicated reasons and one big, important, relatively uncomplicated one: The countries trying to meet the huge demands of wealthy markets such as the United States are also trying to prevent mass-casualty events.” 

 

“Infection-prevention measures have recently closed high-volume shipping ports in China, the country that supplies the largest share of goods imported to the United States. In Vietnam and Malaysia, where workers churn out products as varied as a third of all shoes imported to the U.S. and chip components that are crucial to auto manufacturing, controlling the far more transmissible Delta variant has meant sharply decreasing manufacturing capacity and reducing manpower at busy container ports.” •

 Climate Change “We Should Shame Frequent Fliers” [Jacobin].
“What is good for the American tourist is terrible for the planet. At the height of the pandemic, the grounding of air travel in 2020 led to a 60 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from aviation. One round-trip flight across the Atlantic emits about as much carbon dioxide as heating an average American home with natural gas for a year. And Americans are disproportionately to blame. Prior to the pandemic year, the United States, with just over 4 percent of the world’s population, was responsible for 24 percent of all emissions from passenger flights. And within the US, just 12 percent of adults take 68 percent of the flights. With planes once again ferrying Americans to ostensibly exotic locales, tourists are back to mucking up the planet in the middle of a climate disaster…
While the elite tourist should be the primary target, even those who aren’t racking up frequent flier miles should avoid unnecessary air travel. To justify their jaunts, American tourists will go on and on about

the opportunity to experience new cultures,
meet new people,
and contribute to the local economy of waiters, cab drivers, and tour guides….

Once upon a time, when people traveled infrequently and stayed at places for long periods of time, it made more sense to think of tourism as a moral good, as something that could actually accomplish its stated goals of

meeting people and
learning about new cultures without unduly harming the earth.

In those days, nobody zipped off 

to Vail for a weekend of skiing or
to Paris for a four-day birthday trip,

the sort of travel that’s common among today’s wealthy cosmopolites. As climate change foments weather disasters and threatens to make one in three plant and animal species extinct, the planet can no longer accommodate such indulgent sightseeing.”

 Manufacturing: “Boeing lifts China jet demand estimate over two decades to $1.47 trln” [Reuters]. “Chinese airlines will need 8,700 new airplanes through 2040, 1.2% higher than its previous prediction of 8,600 planes made last year. Those would be worth $1.47 trillion based on list prices, the U.S. planemaker said in a statement."

Nakedcaptalism commet
    First, I think Mother Nature may have something to say about aircraft travel projections.
    Second, the assumption is that former national champion Boeing can take advantage of the demand. That in turn assumes they get their manufacturing, software engineering, and development programs back on track. None of that is a lock, especially given Boeing’s
finance-oriented board,
pencil-necked,
union-hating management,
and justifiably disgruntled workforce.
    Third, at some point China’s going to have climbed the learning curve on aircraft manufacturing and started coming down the other side. By 2040? I would say obviously. 

    Finally, geopolitics. Get it together, Boeing!